Today’s Question by Aart Hilal

It is obvious from your books, that contemporary world, or society, seems to you too oppressive, too uniform. That people live, as your heroine of the River Piedra, seeking, what, in fact, they do not desire. In your opinion, what is the balance between traditions, prejudice, upbringing, etc. and personal responsibility of an individual for his/her own destiny?

We cannot blame anybody but ourselves. Freud was a nice guy, but he created this idea that our parents are responsible for everything that went wrong with our adulthood. Of course, as Ortega y Gasset says, “I am myself and my circumstance” but everybody is different, and must accept this. The frustrated Marxist experiment reassured us that first comes our individuality, and our sense of responsibility towards our neighbor.